


Greek Prosaic

by Fantasio



Category: Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: 'What if' scenario, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 07:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2764709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fantasio/pseuds/Fantasio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if that scene at the theatre of Dionysus had happened differently?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Greek Prosaic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rachel2205](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachel2205/gifts).



The sun was setting on the theatre of Dionysus. No breath of air came to disturb the Englishman sitting on the steps, holding his head in his hands. Even though it was getting late and the monumental, vast theatre was now empty, the man did not seem to want to move from his spot.  
Clive Durham was thinking. And for the first time in his life, it was in the crudest way possible that he thought. His mind was going round and round, about matters such as the cost of respectability versus truth, the strange beauty of being in peace with one's own vulgar body, and wondering if the purity of one's passions were enough to counterbalance and ignore physical love.  
Clive's illness had been a long and terrible bore to push through. His good, overprotective Maurice had been ridiculously worried about him the whole time, but in truth it wasn't the pain or repetitiveness of his relapses that had worried Clive. He had little time to loose worrying about such a prosaic thing as his health. But the weakness that the sickness had brought down on his body, that was something Clive had despised.  
He mostly tended to avoid thinking about the specificities that came with having a body, and he had done so for all of his life until now. That was the very thing that had saved him from perdition, now nearly a decade ago. From his younger years at school, at the time he had not yet learned to forget his physical urges, he only remembered pain, anguish, suffering and frustration. Then he had found Plato, and Plato had lifted him out of the mire.

Clive kept his head down a long time. Now, as he raised it, he looked straight into the air, where for so many nights he had imagined Pallas Athene looking down mercifully on him; but the place was empty. From the depth of his mind, of his heart, came forth a single question: “Was it worth it?”. Clive spoke it into the empty, heavy air, into the dying sun. And suddenly, something snapped inside of him. He thought back on all the times he had seen Maurice sprawled on the ground during their boyish games, all the times they had been half-naked together, all the chaste kisses they had exchanged while something burned and throbbed inside of him. _Was it worth it?_  
Worth what, precisely? A dying sun, on a dying land, in the midst of a crumbling stage full of dead deities? Did he reject his early Christian beliefs which had shunned and humiliated him for others that made him live a half-life, torn between bounded, painful desires and dry respectability? He thought about Maurice, his luminous smile, the warmth of his arms around him, the way their bodies touched when they slept in the same bed. Two visions arose in his mind: formulas of confined happiness, swirling around, taking the shape of the island he knew as Great Britain; and in its centre, piercing through the veil of confusion, the truth of every Greek poem he had ever read. _Love was harmonious, immense._  
For so long, he had thought that his body was merely something to tame, while his obscene thoughts mocked him, him and his feeble prayers. He had thought he lived in a glass tower of fear, a house of righteousness and comfort. But he would break that house down. He would destroy what had kept him apart from Maurice for so long. He would free them both. He knew his dearest friend would always save him in the end.  
He had been so mean-spirited towards Maurice during his illness. Would he ever forgive him?

Clive got up. He had come here, to Greece, to put his mind to rest, and was now awakening, just as the breezy night was falling down on him, with a new soul. He would write to Maurice. He would say that he loved him, now more than ever. He was coming back home, and this time, he knew he really had one. Maurice was a forgiver, and much more of a saint that Clive ever was.

 

Pippa had looked at his brother strangely ever since he had come back from Greece. Clive was staying at her place for a short while. He was planning on buying a bigger flat, perhaps even a house. He really needed a double-bed, instead of these two rotten single ones he had at his present flat. Later, he would go to Maurice. He was almost feverish again, but this time with anticipation.  
His sister came up to him, asking him if everything was alright. “Yes, everything is, sister. It really is.”  
“Is, or ought to be?”  
Clive smiled. It was one of his usual phrase.  
“This time, I am what I am, and not what I ought to be.”  
Pippa looked at him, from the depth of the years of shared childhood, and something changed in her eyes. She told him to go and talk to Maurice “sooner than his mind might change”. Clive agreed. Then, on a whim, he embraced her.

Clive was polite and friendly with Maurice's family. He waited until they were alone in the little room to come up to his younger friend and kiss him. Maurice must have felt something was different that time, because he did not seem surprised when Clive began running his hand up and down the younger man's body, and his breathing was already coming fast when Clive pushed him against the wall.  
While Clive felt liberated, he nevertheless didn't forget that noise travel through walls, and stopped his ministrations as soon as Maurice moans became more than whispers. Taking a few steps back, he blushed as he watched Maurice's state of undress, his shirt untucked and his trousers partially down. But Maurice then surprised them both by taking some steps fowards, his blue eyes suddenly dark with something Clive had already seen in him, but never to that degree.  
“Clive...” Maurice closed the distance between them, and kissed him again, while beginning to slowly unbutton Clive's trousers. “You're not going to let me down that way again, old man.” He let Clive's trousers fall down and began to caress the crudely evident bulge in the other man's pants. Clive gasped, and Maurice pushed him down on the armchair behind him.  
Carefully, Maurice knelt down in front of Clive, pulled down what was left to hide his friend's respectability, and looked up at him, his eyes both earnest and playful, a little smile on his lips.  
“You have to promise to not make any noises, old chap.”  
The next few minutes were the longest, most agonizing and heavenly Clive had ever experienced. He thankfully had some training at hiding that sort of noises, even though it was usually not provoked by a handsome, blue eyed man's mouth, and he usually did not have to bite his fist to keep from crying out in bliss while masculine hands cupped and massaged his buttocks. He tried to signal Maurice as the pleasure rose and rose in him, like a wave of unsaid words ready to burst, but his friend didn't seem to want to hear anything. So Clive simply threw his head and, finally, released himself of every thoughts, concepts and fears he ever had.

  
Afterwards, while they laid down together on the sofa, well-spent, both of their hearts beating at the same time, Maurice tenderly whispered to him:

“Don't you like being a little dirty, Clive?”

Clive thought back to Greece, and Cambridge, and Italy, and all of the places where he had been and where he had decided of his own worth in terms of Greek poetry and abstract concepts. But this moment had been poetry, as well. And such a glorious poem at that. Then, could the two planes of his existence coexist, at last, in peace?

  
“Yes, Maurice, I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Here you go, dear recipient! I hope my writing between the canon lines has satisfied your prompt. :) It was really a pleasure to write, since I have so much feelings for the wasted potential of Clive/Maurice. *sigh* Happy Yuletide from your Goat! :D


End file.
